National Languages

National Languages

Did you know that the United States does not have an official national language? We discuss the issue on this edition of Global Connection.

Right now, there are about 55 countries where English is the national language including Bermuda, The Cayman Islands, Fiji, and Malawi to name a few.

Do you think English should be our country’s national language? Or is it even important?

Maxwell felt that it was common sense that English is our national language even though it isn’t officially recorded as such. We are clearly using it within our government to run operations and conduct business.

Serena agreed that it doesn’t need to be official. She gave us the example of Ireland. According to the Irish constitution, Irish is the first official national language, but English is clearly the dominant language there. Only about 30 percent of the people actually speak Irish!

But, both agreed that English unites us as a country!

Here are some interesting facts we found about languages around the world:

According to this report from the CIA, there are 140 languages in the world only spoken by 10 people or less! Can you imagine? What if only 10 people spoke YOUR same language?

CIA World Factbook

And imagine trying to communicate in Papua New Guinea! That country has over 800 separate languages! Maxwell reminded us that Papua New Guinea is about the size of Texas. Texas has about 250 counties. So, imagine if EACH county spoke three unique languages!

We all agreed that those areas of the world would become incredibly divisive without speaking a common tongue. We also agreed that we would love to be fluent in more languages. This definitely would make traveling easier and help with understanding the culture and community of other regions!

We would love to hear your thoughts? Do you think English should be the national language of the United States? We would love to hear how many languages you speak as well!